Fifty-Two Story Talks to Boys and GirlsChidley, Howard J. (Howard James)
Religion
Fifty-Two Story Talks to Boys and Girls
Chidley, Howard J. (Howard James)
Children's sermons
All the vessels on the oceans can be divided into two classes:
steamships and sailing vessels. The sailing vessels, as you know, set
their broad white sails like wings to catch the favouring winds, and
then they go scudding across the seas like birds to their distant
harbours. But when there is no wind these vessels must sometimes lie
becalmed, and do not move for days or sometimes weeks. The steamships,
on the other hand, do not depend upon the wind to drive them ahead.
Their power comes from great engines away down in the heart of the
vessel. Even if the wind blows right in the face of the ship, it only
makes the boiler-fires burn faster and brighter, and she plunges ahead
in spite of wind or tide.
Boys and girls also can be divided into two classes, like ships. Some
depend upon other boys and girls to make them go; others have the "go"
in themselves. These people with the "go" in themselves we call
"go-ahead" sort of people. They are the boys and girls who become
leaders. The others are followers.
What the world most needs is these "go-ahead" people. There are plenty
of people who go like a sailing vessel when there is something from the
outside to send them along. I heard a man say the other day that another
man was like "a chip in a pan of milk;" that is, he went only where he
was pushed.
If you want to have "go" in yourselves, try to think things out for
yourselves. Don't do things just because somebody else does them. Don't
wear things just because somebody else wears them. Don't say things just
because somebody else says them. Paul says that people who are blown
about by every wind do not amount to much. I am sure of this, at least,
that I should rather be a steamship than a sailing vessel, that only
goes when a wind blows.
A FISH-STORY
A recent writer tells in one of his books of an experience he had as a
boy when he went on a fishing-trip with his father.
They were wading along in brooks with their rubber-boots on. But
sometimes the water was too deep for him, and he was in danger of
getting his feet wet by the water running in over the tops of his boots.
When, however, they came to places like these, his father would take him
pig-a-back and carry him along, and then the boy would fish with his rod
resting on his father's shoulder, and his line dangling in front. And
this writer says that he used to catch many fish in this way. Then he
adds, "How many of our best catches in life are made over someone's else
shoulder?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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